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Translated from the original Spanish by Barnaby Conrad , Penguin Number 1623.
Luis Mario Cayetano Spota Saavedra Ruotti Castañares (Mexico City, 1925 - 1985), was a self-taught Mexican writer and journalist, author of more than 30 books, several of which have been translated into more than ten languages.
Period Spanish hotel stamp on front endpapers ( this was presumably robbed from the hotel)
Luis Ortega, 17, and his manager, Camioneto, 19, arrive penniless in Mexico City where Luis dreams of becoming a torero ( a bullfighter) . After a dissolute interlude, and the death of a friend, they travel on through Mexico, doing small jobs. They meet ""Mario"", another torero, on a bull ranch and Mario proves to be a girl-Maria- with whom Luis falls in love. Maria soon becomes a popular attraction in the ring and is taken up by wealthy patrons. Luis, consumed with jealousy, starts to drink and loses his nerve-eventually returns to Mexico City and almost succumbs to the advances of a homosexual impressario. Camioneto gets him a job out of town, he is gored in the ring, and almost dies. Finally cleared of his illusions about Maria and past entanglements, he is ready to begin his career as a great torero.... It teems with the color, characters, the idiom, the sordid spectacle - and the gore - of the peculiar world of the bull-ring.
